


Broad Smiles & Brittle Bones (Honey how you hurt me again, and again, and again)

by Lucidlucy (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, F/M, I am not sorry, SADNESS AND ANGST AND HURT, alternative universe, cw: suicidal thoughts, getting it in before the movie wrecks us all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 09:29:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12956313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Lucidlucy
Summary: "The first time he knew pain at her hand, she had wrenched him open and spilled his deepest secrets to the cold air of an interrogation room in which she was the strapped down prisoner and yet he was the one subjugated, flash-frozen to the spot by the fury of her assault. He slunk away to lick his wounds then, because even though she’d made no mark on his skin (not yet, anyway), left no rope burns around his neck, she’d gone straight for the jugular. "Or the story of how I like to hurt Kylo Ren. (mature rating due to tag warnings)





	Broad Smiles & Brittle Bones (Honey how you hurt me again, and again, and again)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EjBlaKit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EjBlaKit/gifts).



> A smol one-shot from yours truly.  
> Warning: I'm not particularly kind to Kylo Ren for a large portion of this. He's very much set on emotionally hurting himself and not a small amount of suicidal.

 

The first time he knew pain at her hand, she had wrenched him open and spilled his deepest secrets to the cold air of an interrogation room in which she was the strapped down prisoner and yet he was the one subjugated, flash-frozen to the spot by the fury of her assault. He slunk away to lick his wounds then, because even though she’d made no mark on his skin (not yet, anyway), left no rope burns around his neck, she’d gone straight for the jugular. 

He’d spent years learning to defend himself from scrutiny. Even his own. He’d learned to bury the pain and the ache and the insecurity, learned to stoke the fire in his veins with righteous anger, with brimstone and flint, and yet—

— and yet she’d walked through the fire unscathed and grabbed that pulsing scrap of inscrutable self-doubt _anyway_. She’d wrenched it from the spectre clutches of a weak, foolish boy who’d tried to cling onto the last shreds of some imagined family legacy, one warped and made ugly by the dark cage in which he kept it. She’d presented it to Kylo from under her bloodied fingernails like one would a recently torn out heart, hands blood red and victorious even as the muscle gave one last, tired throb.

Those hands had taken with them a piece of him.

So he’d licked his wounds and yet came back for more, this time tasting copper and tin on his tongue from the gash on his face and smelling it in the air from the hole punched into his side by a crossbow’s bullet, and he had no idea how he didn’t die from a blown up kidney but that mattered little when the girl had lacerated his pride _twice_. This time he couldn’t really lick his wounds better. No, this time he’d need surgery and stitches; he’d need bacta and a First Order transport floor, or a med bay bed to bleed all on top of, hoping he could bleed his shame out of him in the process. 

When he finally managed to stop chasing his tail in a never ending cycle of self pity and hate, and had once again tenderly fanned a small flame back into the dying, ashy pyre that had become his will to live with promises that he would fight, that he would _win_ , he learned that _she_ was not yet done inflicting pain. What he had imagined to be the drug induced delirium that kept him drunk on images of the scavenger for weeks as he recovered turned out to be a permanent fixation in his mind. 

When he finally managed to stand on his own two feet, to face his master and be told what a disgrace he was (the knowledge of which would become own personal flogger for days to come), he smashed his helmet against the durasteel wall and wished it could have been his head instead. Why? Why couldn’t he stop feeling her? Her presence in him itched, burned like recently irritated welts against too sensitive skin. He couldn’t get rid of her. Yet for reasons unknown she was as angry and frustrated as he was, and he took comfort in that. 

Not that it lasted long, because when he found himself flying again, trying to escape from a hell of his own making, he realized she felt his elation, however small it was, and embraced it unknowingly. And he realized she whispered words he couldn’t understand because this fucking _thing_ in his head linking them together didn’t give him _words_ , it gave him insubstantial bits of emotional sludge instead and why wouldn’t it? Of course everything to do with the desert rat would have to be _difficult_. He should have known the second she refused to hand over a stupid map she really would have had no use for that everything involving Rey of Jakku would _always_ be difficult. So why was he so surprised by the emotional sludge? He had no time to decipher it and little desire to even try to, emotionally stunted as he was, so he shoved it and her to the back of his head as best as he possibly could and tried to move on with his life. 

But that was never going to work, was it? No. It wasn’t.

So when the elation of flying again faded and he started to burn in the hell of his own making as he aligned his mother’s ship with the hair triggers of his ion blasters, he knew pain like nothing else he’d ever felt because _that was his mother._ Yet the worst part of it all was that Rey felt his turmoil but didn’t understand it, nor did she understand she was linked to _him_ of all people, yet her moral compass must have bled into him because he couldn’t take the shot. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t.

So somebody else did.

Somebody else took the shot, and his mother’s ship went up in flames, taking along with it her life signature, and Kylo watched his life flash before his eyes in a series of oxygen deprived happy memories that never happened. Happy memories he’d wished he’d made. Just like for a single moment he’d wished he’d never hesitated where Han Solo was concerned, because it was now eating him alive and his heart was dying with his mother. 

Kylo sobbed, and across the galaxy Rey’s chest squeezed so hard she thought she would perish even if she didn’t know why. 

He considered ending it right there; crashing his ship into another and going up in flames with his mother, ending the legacy that had brought him and his mother and his father and his uncles so much pain. But he didn’t, because he was a well practiced masochist when it came to emotionally crucifying himself just to _feel_ , and two of the three people who could inflict the most pain were now gone, and he had no idea how to reach the third, so he would turn to the fourth and only one available. But until he found her, he had things to do. 

At that moment he turned on Snoke, because Snoke had given the order that had finally gotten his mother killed, but not before admitting to himself that he missed his mother’s embrace. That spectre of a young, foolish boy awoke, grabbing the bars of his cage with a white-knuckled grip now that Rey had unburdened his hands, screaming to be let out in a voice that grated from disuse, escaping from Kylo’s body in the chemical compounds of his anguished tears and savage sobs as he curled up in bed alone that night. He mourned what he had not earned the right to mourn, and promised himself that he would know pain as penance.

He searched and searched and finally found the new source of his pain, sequestered off on an island, playing at being a Jedi while a reluctant Skywalker shunned her and refused her training. He watched from a distance after crashing his ship so that he couldn’t be followed, finally severing the last link to the First Order, and approached.

Rey hated him. And he was ready to feel pain again, because he had promised that this was how he paid for the lives of his parents, how he paid for his mistakes. 

Rey was the storm that could douse his fire, strangle it permanently, and he wanted to drown, because drowning wasn’t a peaceful death like so many people believed. No. Drowning was ugly. Drowning involved the panic of a throat constricting, of air escaping, of blood vessels exploding from the pressure, of knowing there was no return from his lungs filling and spasming helplessly and expanding against their will as long as he held his head underwater long enough, and she could give him that. It was not enough to make up for what he’d done, but it would begin to balance the scales. So he let her hate him and surrendered without explanation, tossing his saber at her feet.

“Why?” she asked, eyes glistening with tears of rage. She now understood that the violent maelstrom in her head had been him, and he could see in her eyes her desire to claw out his own. He almost wished she would. “Why are you surrendering?”

“Because all of _this_ ,” he said, motioning with wide hands to the island, but his eyes were pinned on his saber—on her saber—and he knew she understood what he meant. “All of this is pointless.” 

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” she asked even as she picked up his saber and ignited it, holding hers and his and pointing them both at him. She could decapitate him. This, too, he wished for fervently and regretted knowing he couldn’t allow it. He certainly would have let her, if not for the fact that it would be too easy. 

“You can believe whatever you’d like, scavenger.” He said. He had no reason to explain himself to her. He just knew she was the key. 

So he allowed himself to be transported to the Resistance, allowed himself to be shackled in Force inhibitors (whoever said the Resistance played fair or legally?), to be beaten, to be questioned until his vocal chords turned raw and he was coated in blood and yes, _yes—_ this is what he wanted, and he watched with amusement as Rey was made his ward because nobody else had the power to contain _his_ , but _she_ did.

He was kept alive for information and Kylo kept himself alive for the glorious ache of knowing that this was his life now, that he would atone in the only way he’d ever been shown how, with agony, until there was nothing else left of him to give. He would spiral soon past those gates of darkness, and then he’d be able to sleep permanently. He doubted people like him were ever allowed to blend with the Force upon death, but in a way he deserved to exist in limbo forever. In hell. He was fine with that. And until then that suffering and his desire for vengeance kept him breathing. 

But even then, at the lowest of his despair, he hadn’t understood how much pain he would suffer at the hands of his savior and captor, because he hadn’t understood that the link in his head served as more than just a wet-blanket filter through which he somehow felt her confusion, anger and frustration. No, no. This would be the story of how his real suffering began.

****

Six months into the wait for the death sentence he was sure was coming any day now, and Kylo hadn’t seen a single ray of sunshine. He’d been kept in a cell at the center of what he could only imagine was a reinforced prison somewhere off the coast on a remote moon out in the unknown regions. He knew there were guards, and more guards, from the inner ring of his cell at the center of the complex all the way to the impenetrable, unscalable walls kissing the cliffs. 

He’d forgotten what day it was. What month, even. He’d forgotten what his face looked like, where his moles and beauty marks were placed, and the color of his own eyes, because he had seen nothing but darkness. But he could _feel_. 

He could feel that his hair was now dangerously close to inching past his shoulders, that his scar bisected an unkempt, dry, itchy beard. He could feel that his skin was dry and taut and itchy from rushed sonic showers (the only human decency he was regularly afforded, and by regular he meant only when the guards remembered to) and nothing else to put moisture back into it. He could feel the edges of his jagged nails, bitten to the quick because it gave him something to do in the darkness. And he could feel Rey’s presence outside his door.

“Come to see me at last,” he half-joked when the heavy doors groaned open, then winced at the fact that he didn’t really even recognize his own voice. It was scratchy and weak, throat as equally parched as the rest of him. Not that he cared all that much. He had spent years unlearning the sound of his own voice by wearing a vocoder in his helmet. This was just another form of detachment. 

She stood there and made no move to step inside for so long he started to wonder if he was imagining her, a simmering hallucination brought on by dehydration. Rey stood in the beam of light and seemed to _become_ it. He squinted hard, feeling blind. It was painful. Good. 

They had spent six months becoming painfully acquainted with each other via their bond. Or rather, becoming adept at ignoring each other and behaving as though the other did not exist. She had become a hum in his head and he the annoying buzzing of a gnat in hers, and that was about the extent of it. But now he was looking at her from under the razor thin slit of his lashes as his eyes tried to adjust to the light and Rey studied him where he sat huddled in darkness, and he felt the bond flare to life.

Even with the force inhibitors manacling his neck and ankles, and the painful shackles weighing down his wrists, the bond was so painful, so bright within himself when he’d become used to the damp, sticky darkness of his cell and his thoughts. He almost wished she’d leave already and let him scurry back into obscurity. He was thankful for the force inhibitors then. He knew that if they weren’t in place, the brightness and heat of the force bond would scour his skin and peel it right off him with its intensity, and he must make his pain last yet. He couldn’t let her take him out just like that. He had barely begun to scratch the surface on his atonement for his father. Kylo’s fingers rose, gently wrapping around the edges of the collar around his neck like one would hold onto their most treasured possession, wishing he could sever the bond. 

There was a twinge of pain and they both winced, but his mind had no time to catalog that mutual physical response as _interesting_ because Rey’s words turned his now very small, very dank world inside his cell upside down.

“Snoke is dead,” she proclaimed, a deafening beat of silence grinding Kylo’s bones into the floor. “The First Order’s been defeated.”

So. It was time to die. They would kill him now, having extracted all they wanted out of him. A part of him shouted that _no, no, no!_ this was not enough, that he had not _suffered_ enough, had not atoned for his sins enough. A smaller, quieter part of him sighed in relief that it would soon be over, because that smaller part of him was exhausted from carrying the weight of his self loathing on its shoulders, its knees shredded and bloody from being crushed into the ground. 

Rey had still not moved away from the door, and when she hesitated, shifting her weight from foot to foot as if debating on whether she would regret her next statement or not—and most likely, she would—Kylo began to wonder what other colossal revelation she had in store. 

“Get up. You will be coming with me.”

Kylo tilted his head back. The smaller, quieter part of him whimpered at the budding prospect of relief.  “Ah, so you’re to be my executioner.”

They stared at each other, both of them gathering a million words to their tongues and unable to utter a single one. She said nothing, but he could read it in her face. Here they were, the last two standing at the edge of the world, and nothing would come. 

Rey shook her head, stepping into the room and approaching as though to meet a skittish animal—which, he guessed, might just well be what he looked like—before dropping to her knees in front of him. Those fingers he’d come to know so painfully intimately though he’d never managed to hold reached forward, twitching as they moved closer to his collar and his manacles. She felt it just as it as well as he could. That void of power where there once had been a never ending well. 

“Scared?” he asked, voice soft and eyes softer because as much as he told himself he hated this girl, this garbage picker who went on to turn his and everyone else’s worlds upside down, deep inside his heart squeezed with an unidentifiable sense of kinship. Only she could understand his pain at being shackled and powerless. Only Rey. Of the trillions of creatures in the universe, this… this _girl_ , this _woman_ was his other half. He hated that more than anything.

Rey shot him a glare then squared her shoulders and, with a hard exhale, wrapped her hands around the inhibitor around his neck and _pulled_. What she did with her power to make it come off he would never know and casually wondered why _his_ attempts had failed, but the next moment she dropped the collar like a live wire, teeth bared in disgust. Kylo watched her from under heavy lids, never bothering to sit up straight as she moved to bend over his ankles, grabbing at one of the inhibitors. He wondered why having Rey prostrated at his feet didn’t bring the surge of self righteous exhilaration it once had. 

She freed him and stood up, only turning to give him a terse _‘come_ ’ before stalking out the doors, and he found himself hesitating. He hadn’t seen the outside of those doors in a very long time. Sometimes he had wondered if he’d just simply be forgotten here, left to starve and decay. Now the door remained open, the hall outside brightly lit, and his stomach churned. 

He listened to Rey’s footsteps dim, unknowing of where she was leading him yet struggling to drag in air at the sudden _rush_ that became their force bond reigniting so much more brightly inside his mind. Her face might have been calm and collected, but that link, that _beam_ of light and power said something else. 

Rey was scared. Every single emotion told him she was apprehensive, bones brittle with tension and longing and ache, with hate and something that felt too close to love, incomprehensible as it was, and a certainty that he was not being led to his death. So he followed.

In the months to come he would hurt again, but the hurt this time was Rey standing at the ramp of the _Falcon_ , and Kylo could hear his father’s voice all over again. Talk about opening up wounds that would have been better left closed, crust-scabbed over and itchy but mostly benign, unlike the sudden rush of blood to his ears as that wound started bleeding into his heart—from _it—_ and he once again felt the pain of what he’d done.

How stupid he’d been. He’d hoped he’d suffered enough, managed to atone in his mother and father’s eyes, but Rey had other ideas. Death would have been more welcome.

He was taken to a hideout and Kylo frowned, staring at the vast nothingness of a white world burning bright and humid and completely devoid of light, the brightness blinding him after months of isolation. Maybe she was trying to hurt him more, but he couldn’t make himself ask the question, the words once again dying on his mouth when she spoke—

“You have two choices. You can either come with me to the base with an inhibitor around your ankle, and allow yourself to be under supervision at all times, or you can stay here without one and find a way to rebuild as somebody else.”

What an ultimatum. Her voice was harsh but her eyes are sad, and he did not dare wonder what the meaning behind that sheen of tears dampening her lashes is. For the first time the words sank in. She was offering him freedom. 

And Maker, at what cost. 

“And this… _connection_?” 

“Ignore it.” she said. 

As if. How was he supposed to ignore his soulmate, always feeling her but not knowing where she was? How was he supposed to live with that phantom limb again, made worse by the fact that it _lived_ now, throbbing and making him feel whole again. He made his decision without thinking.

“I’m coming with you.”

Rey’s lips thinned into a hard line and her eyes became stone-cold, but he still felt the jump of hopeful, dreaded delight at his decision. She could not hide from him, not in the way she wanted to. So he followed when she turned back on her heel up the ramp without a word, ducking his head to keep from hitting it on the overpass as he followed inside and allowed himself to be chained with another inhibitor, then was allowed to play the role of copilot in exchange. Small mercies, he concluded, and let her take him home. 

He knew it would not be easy. He knew he’d be back in captivity, no matter Rey’s faux reassurances that it would be more comfortable this time around. He knew he would hurt, because even if Rey felt for him, she didn’t _feel_ for him. He would have to watch her rebuild, be free, maybe even move on. Maybe fall in love. Maybe marry a better man than he and grow big with child and happiness that Kylo would never feel nor be allowed to partake in. Maybe grow old. Without him. And he would have to watch. He would have to do it all and do so with grace, something he had never been particularly great at. And yet—

He was lost forever, but even as he realized it with an ache that clung to his very lungs, he allowed himself a broad smile. He was lost, but she was _there_. And maybes were only maybes.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a one-shot I started a few weeks ago before the latest round of spoilers dropped, but after a few things I've seen the last few days I had to get my ass in gear and finish writing the last 500 words or so and finish it. Sort of. Apparently the more I hurt someone, the more flowery it gets ;p whatev. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
